The village, based on land between Woodbridge Road and Commercial Road, closed at the end of January after just two months of trading to enable "improvements to be made".

According to the council more than 180 companies, ranging from retail, food and drink, are vying for a place at the village.

Although it is not yet known when it will reopen, councillors at Guildford Borough Council's overview and scrutiny committee on Tuesday (March 14) were told the retail units will be ready to "capitalise on the summer months".

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Guildford Pop-Up Village

During a question and answer session, Cllr David Bilbé, lead councillor for economic development, said: "I have had a lot of comments about the adequacy, the positioning, the fencing, and various things that relate to the site.

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Instead of focusing on retail as "an objective", he said retail should have been a "consequence of doing other things to bring footfall into an area" like more events to increase footfall.

Cllr Bilbé said experts should have been brought in to assist with the project.

Reflecting on the difficulties, director of resources Steve White added: "We all had aspirations to be open at Christmas to take advantage of the spree of shoppers. "

Guildford Pop-Up Village (Image: Darren Pepe)

"No way did anyone realise the retail market would struggle across the board nationally, let alone in Guildford. And of course it coincided with the fact we were still trying to complete infrastructure.

"The tenants did their best to keep their spirits up while we were trying to tackle marketing as we were running along, and that was the biggest problem.

"We were actually trying to cope with major infrastructure development while we were trying to compete on the marketing front and plan for the future. We couldn't do all of those things at the same time."

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Councillors at the meeting put forward suggestions of having more attractive wooden chalets, a children's play area at the site and allowing charities to use one of the units, as well as scrapping the idea altogether and instead using the boxes for shelter for the homeless.

Suggesting that would be a "better use of land", Cllr Susan Parker added: "I was never entirely persuaded in the first place.

"It was presented as a scheme that was going to be very exciting, a wonderful initiative and was going to cover all its cost and generate half a million surplus over two years. It failed.

"Can we make sure before we put more public money into the process that we are thinking through and we don't have another false start."